This Guy’s DIY Lasers Are Seriously Electro-Radical

Nathan Kirkman

YouTube can teach you how to do really useful stuff, sure, but screw all that. Using the nom du video DIY Laser Guy, Drake Anthony offers straightforward smoke-filled tutorials for creating your very own Skywalker-worthy sabers. Anthony got his hands on a green laser at age 12, and he’s been ripping apart household electronics ever since. “It was trial and error,” he says. “I learned a lot about it on the Internet.” Now he’s giving back. Anthony’s videos have been viewed about 40 million times. Most of his work is recycling—he extracts diodes from DVD burners and digital projectors, pulls heat sinks from dead computers, fits them into modules, hooks up batteries, and melts electronics with built-from-scratch radiation. It’s so worth it: Anthony’s videos include instructions for modding crappy air guns into laser rifles or building a dynamic lava lamp using Blu-ray and highlighter ink. (Building your own laser is legal, but manufacturers that sell them are tightly regulated.) Now 21, Anthony plans to eventually focus on laser treatments for cancer patients—he’s premed. But he mostly just has fun setting stuff on fire. “I’ve been nipped,” he says. Blisters aren’t fun, and scorched eyeballs are worse: “Always wear laser goggles.” He works out of his parents’ basement. Dorms frown on this kind of thing.